false 2 0 false false Sun Apr 05 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Feb 24 11:25:38 -0800 2009 Sun Apr 05 20:18:27 -0700 2009
The graphicness of the book is great! It's just a shame that it couldn't have been done for a worthwhile plot and characters. I liked the ways that it used the graphic format: Repeatedly splicing in a panel with related symbolism; or splicing together two scenes (to compare and contrast); the way that a page turn would serve as a scene change; or the way that someone's sentence might end with some text and we'd see or jump to an imagine that was either a pun of that text or an ironic contradiction (such as a sentence ending with "an end to fighting" but the image is of people fighting); or when the scene change retains some image or shape across the change, such as going from a yellow circular moon to a yellow circular clock or changing from one cloudy scene to another cloudy scene. Those kinds of elements were very very cool.

But I found the plot to be exceedingly boring -- you could write every detail of the plot in one page of text! I was never interested in the plot and the ending didn't make anything the least bit more interesting. I never cared about the characters, I often wished they would shut the hell up, their continuous "blah blah blah" was maddening. I have finished the book and can't remember a single thing that any character said, it was that pointless. Gah, I'm glad to be done with that story.

This was one of the first graphic novels that I've ever read (I've probably read one or two others), so I'm not a graphic novel fanatic. I certainly found the graphic-novel-ness of the book to be good, so none of my complaints are about that, and I'll certainly read another graphic novel -- just not one by Alan Moore! I've liked all the stories [movies:] that have had Neil Gaman's name attached to them, so I think I'd investigate reading something by him. At least I know he can come up with a good story.

I wanted to give this book 1 star (well, since 0 stars isn't possible!), but the interesting graphic-novel aspects were a redeeming feature, so I'm giving it 2 stars.
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